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I am not going to bad mouth Microsoft or Bill Gates; there are enough people out there who choose to do that. Bill Gates donates millions of dollars every year to charity, and even has his own charitable foundation. That being said, let me describe a situation for you and explain why switching is better than dealing with the huge downsides of remaining a Windows user.

My father lives in a small town in Illinois, population of about 3,000. He was a lifetime Windows user. He has had PCs with everything from Windows 3.1 all the way to Windows XP. Being that he is in his 60s, both change and technology are things he does not take kindly to. Recently, he was in the market for a new computer. He does the things most users do: check e-mail, manage music, surf the internet over his just acquired DSL connection. Against my recommendations, he decided to go down to his local PC builder and have a machine built with Windows XP preloaded. The first thing it did when he got it home and set up was crash. I got a phone call. He thought that he had done something wrong, of course. While I was troubleshooting with him on the phone, going over various settings and the like, guess what? The PC crashed again. I advised him to return the machine and get a Mac.

He returned the machine alright; he brought home the exact same configuration in a new PC. Not to my surprise it crashed four times in the three days after he got it home—the “fatal exception” output all over again. An all too often problem Windows users have to deal with, I had not seen it in years. This is just an example of what happens when you install the Windows operating system on hardware that it has not been tested with. You will never have to deal with this from Apple. OS X is made for the hardware and the hardware is made for OS X. Aside from a hard disk or memory upgrade, the hardware will never change. Some users will look at that and say its not “expandable,” which was my fathers biggest complaint about switching to a Mac. To that, I say you’re right, but Apple hardware is the cutting edge of what is available on the market and should not need to be “expanded” for several years. Most users replace their machines every four or so years. Apple’s hardware should last at least that long.

After days of fighting with the PC, I finally convinced him to return the machine and purchase a 20” iMac from Apple. This, too, had its bumps, he turned it on and had no idea what he was looking at or how to use it. This was an easy fix, I got his e-mail configured in Mail, told him what Safari was and how to use it, and explained iTunes to him. All of this took about an hour, and he was set to go. This was two years ago, and I have not gotten a computer related call since then.

I am going through the same thing right now with my in-laws, and I hope, for their sake, they also make the decision to switch to Apple.